Company

Community

Contact

Client Resources

Author Privacy Statement

AUTHOR PRIVACY STATEMENT

Privacy and transparency are very important to us. This Privacy Statement addresses the data we process about individual authors of content (“Author”, “you” or “your”) on, through or related to the services we offer to our customers.

We are Runtime Collective Limited (trading as Brandwatch) (“we”, “us” or “Brandwatch”). Our registered office address is at Sovereign House, Church Street, 1st Floor, Brighton, BN1 1UJ, United Kingdom. Our company number is 3898053 and our VAT number 754 7507 10.

1. GENERAL

1.1. We crawl and index publicly available data from the Internet. We also contract directly with third party providers to gain access to their data. In each case, the data we have access to is published or made available by Authors. This data is then collated and stored in our database. We offer access to our database, as well as analytics of the data within that database, to third parties (our “Services”).

1.2. Since all of the data that we access is publicly available, the raw data we have about you could be found by anybody with access to the Internet. Some of this data may be personal information about you (for example your name or username in connection with your Twitter or Facebook profile) and other data may not be (for example if you publish an anonymous review on a website).

1.3. As you are the source of the raw data, you have control over that data within the platform you choose to publish it on (e.g. Twitter or Facebook), including through using the privacy settings made available to you by that platform. In addition to whatever rights you have via your relationship with any publishing platform, you also have certain rights with respect to your personal information that we process, as set out in this Privacy Statement.

2. INFORMATION WE COLLECT ABOUT YOU

2.1. The information we collect varies depending on the source of the information and what you choose to make available. The data could be personal information, or it could be non-personal (e.g. nobody could be reasonably identified from the data). It could include the following:

a. your name, username, handle, or other identifier;

b. the content of the information you have published via that name, username, handle, or other identifier, including comments, expressions, opinions, posts, etc.;

c. your profile picture;

d. your job title or sector;

e. your interests;

f. your location;

g. your gender; and

h. any other information you publish on an Internet website we crawl or on a third party platform that provides us with data.

2.2. In addition to the information you make available about yourself, we may also use that information to infer other information about you. For example, based on your name, we may infer your gender. Equally, based on the content of one of your posts, we may infer some of your interests.

2.3. We may also analyze the content of the information you publish and provide our analysis to our customers. For example, if you publish a Tweet stating that you like a certain brand’s ice cream, we may mark that Tweet as having a positive sentiment toward that brand.

3. USING YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION

3.1. We collect the information set out in the previous section in order to provide the Services to our customers. Our aim is to provide technology that empowers our customers to act with more certainty in a way that is easy-to-access and use. Our customers use our Services to learn more about their brand, their customers, their competitors and other information available on the social web that is about or relevant to them.

3.2. We also use the information in ways related to, but ancillary, to the Services we offer. For example, we may use the information to comply with our legal obligations or enforce our rights, including those of third parties. We may also use the information to improve our Services.

3.3. Although it is the responsibility of our customers to use the information properly, we do put in place safeguards to protect your personal information. We require our customers to comply with applicable law, including data privacy law. We also require our customers to comply with acceptable use guidelines concerning how they use the data.

4. SHARING YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION

4.1. In addition to sharing your personal information with our customers, as set out above, we may share your personal information with any member of our company group, which means our subsidiaries, our ultimate holding company and its subsidiaries.

4.2. We may share your personal information with selected third parties, including our business partners, suppliers and sub-contractors for the performance of any contract we enter into with them. We may also share your personal information with analytics and search engine providers that assist us in the improvement and optimisation of our site.

4.3. We may disclose your personal information to third parties. For example, if we sell or buy any business or assets, we may disclose your personal information to the prospective seller or buyer of such business or assets. Alternatively, if we or substantially all of our assets are acquired by a third party, your personal information may be part of the transferred assets.

5. ACCURACY AND RETENTION

5.1. Most of the personal information we have about you comes directly from you. If it is inaccurate, we advise you to fix it on the original platform in which you published that information. In addition to that, in certain cases we infer information about you or may place your personal information into specific profiles or groups. It is our aim to ensure that any of this additional analysis is accurate and kept up to date.

5.2. We will retain any personal information about you for as long as it is reasonably necessary for us to provide the Services. However, if you request that we delete your personal information, or if you delete your personal information from the platform in which it was originally published, we will also delete your personal information from our Services.

6. STORAGE, SECURITY AND YOUR RIGHTS

6.1. We may transfer your personal information to, and store it in, a country other than your own. That country may not provide the same level of data protection as your own country.

6.2. The servers that hold your personal information meet the standards of ISO27001:2013 and have appropriate administrative, technical, and physical controls that are designed to safeguard your personal information, including industry-standard encryption technology.

6.3. In accordance with applicable law, you may request access to the personal information we have about you and request that it be updated, rectified, deleted, or blocked. To exercise these rights, please email us at privacy@brandwatch.com or write to us at the address listed at the top of this document.

6.4. Please note that we cannot always delete records of all historical data. For example, we are required to retain certain records for financial reporting and compliance reasons.

7. PRIVACY PRACTICES OF THIRD PARTIES

7.1. This Privacy Statement only addresses our collection, processing, and use (including disclosure) of your personal information. Our customers and other third parties may have access to your personal information and use it in other ways in accordance with their own privacy practices. We encourage you to familiarize yourself with the privacy statements provided by any platform you use to publish any information.

8. GOVERNING LAW AND JURISDICTION

8.1. This Privacy Statement, and any dispute or claim arising out of or in connection with it, will be governed in accordance with English law. Each party agrees that English courts will have exclusive jurisdiction over any dispute or claim arising out of or connected to this Privacy Statement.